Tag Archives: France

The Curious Life of Violette Morris

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Like most people these days, I sometimes feel the urge to spend an idle hour roaming the Net. Either because I have nothing better to do or out of curiosity. Doing so the other day, I came across a post I considered so curious that I decided to share it with you. Text taken from Wikipedia with a few very minor changes meant to make things shorter and clearer. Comments, welcome.

Violette Morris (18 April 1893 – 26 April 1944) was a French athlete and Nazi collaborator who won two gold and one silver medal at the Women’s World Games in 1921–1922. She was later banned from competing for violating “moral standards”. She was invited to the 1936 Summer Olympics by Adolf Hitler and was an honored guest. During World War II, she collaborated with Nazis and the Vichy France regime. She became known as “the Hyena of the Gestapo” and was killed by the French Resistance.

Early Life.

Violette Morris was born to Baron Pierre Jacques Morris, a retired French Army cavalry captain, and Élisabeth Marie Antoinette Sakakini, of Palestinian Arab origin. Morris spent her adolescence in a convent, L’Assomption de Huy. She married Cyprien Edouard Joseph Gouraud on 22 August 1914 in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. They divorced in May 1923. Morris learned how to drive during World War I and during the war she drove ambulances and worked as a courier including at the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Verdun.

Athletic Career.

Morris played for Fémina Sports from 1917 until 1919, and for Olympique de Paris from 1920 to 1926. She also played on the France women’s national team. She won gold medals at the 1921 and 1922 Women’s Olympiads.

In addition to her football career, she was an active participant in many other sports. She was selected for the French national water polo team even though there was no women’s team at the time. She was an avid boxer, often fighting against, and defeating, men. Among the other sports she participated in were road bicycle racing, motorcycle racing, car racing, airplane racing, horseback riding, tennis, archery, diving, swimming, weightlifting, and Greco-Roman wrestling. Her most brilliant athletic years were considered to be from 1921 to 1924, when her slogan was “Ce qu’un homme fait, Violette peut le faire!” (English: “Anything a man can do, Violette can do!”). In 1924 she participated at the 1924 Women’s Olympiad again taking the gold medal in discus and shot put.

Motor Racing.

Morris had her breasts removed by a mastectomy, which she claimed was in order to fit into racing cars more easily. She mainly competed in cyclecar endurance races and utilized a Benjamin cyclecar. She competed in the Tour de France Automobile in 1923; Bol d’Or 1922, 1923, 1926-8; Paris~Pyrenees 1922, 1923; Paris~Nice 1923, 1927; GP San Sebastian 1926; Dolomites 1934.[10] She won the 1927 Bol d’Or 24 hour car race at the wheel of a B.N.C.

Lifestyle.

Morris’ lifestyle in the 1920s was quite different from the traditional role of women. In addition to her wide-ranging athletic activities, Morris deviated from traditional behaviors of the time in several other ways. She was homosexual, dressed in men’s attire, was a heavy smoker and swore often.

In 1928, the Fédération Féminine Sportive de France (FFSF) (French Women’s Sports Federation) refused to renew her license amid complaints about her lifestyle and she was therefore barred from participating in the 1928 Summer Olympics. The agency cited her lack of morals, in particular, Morris’ penchant for wearing men’s clothing. She had also punched a football referee and had been accused of giving amphetamines to other players. After 1928, her auto racing license was revoked on similar moral grounds and Morris started a car-parts store in Paris, and, along with her employees, built racing cars. The business went bankrupt.

In 1930, Morris unsuccessfully sued the FFSF, claiming damages, as she could no longer earn wages competing as an athlete. During the trial, an obscure ordinance from 1800 forbidding women to wear trousers was used against her. Historian Marie-Jo Bonnet claimed that if Morris’ homosexuality was not directly targeted in the trial, it was made an issue throughout. Ironically, one of the lawyers acting for the FFSF was the noted campaigner for French women’s rights, Yvonne Netter. A quote was attributed to Morris after the trial, but was censored:

We live in a country made rotten by money and scandals, ruled by speechifiers, schemers and cowards. This country of little people is not worthy of its elders, not worthy of survival. Someday its decay will bring it to the level of a slave, but if I’m still here, I won’t be one of the slaves. Believe me, it’s not in my temperament.

 

During her athletic career in the 1920s, Morris became friends and associates with many of France’s artists and intellectuals. She had longstanding friendships with American-born entertainer Josephine Baker, actor Jean Marais, and poet, author, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. In 1939, Morris, along with her partner, actress Yvonne de Bray, invited Cocteau to stay with them at their houseboat docked at Pont de Neuilly where he wrote the three-act play Les Monstres Sacrés.

Arrest and Acquittal for Homicide.

In January 1933 Morris moved into a houseboat, La Mouette, with her partner, Yvonne de Bray, which was moored on the Seine at Pont de Neuilly in northwest Paris near the Bois de Boulogne. Living off inheritance annuities, she took up lyrical singing and was successful enough in the hobby to be broadcast performing on the wireless.

On Christmas Eve 1937, while having dinner with friends and neighbors Robert and Simone de Trobriand at a restaurant in Neuilly, the trio encountered a drunk and aggressive young man named Joseph Le Cam. The unemployed ex-Legionnaire became embroiled in a heated argument with Simone de Trobriand. Morris was able to calm the man after some time. The following evening, after more drinking in Montmartre, Le Cam arrived at Morris’ houseboat and another argument took place, this time between Morris and Le Cam. Le Cam left the houseboat, but soon returned after seeing Simone de Trobriand, with whom he had been arguing the night before, boarding La Mouette. Le Cam then rushed back to the houseboat, brandishing a knife and threatened both Morris and de Trobriand. Morris pushed Le Cam several times before he lunged at her and she produced a 7.65mm revolver. Morris fired four shots, the first two into the air, the following two at Le Cam. He would later die in hospital. Morris was arrested and charged with homicide and incarcerated for four days at the La Petite Roquette prison in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. She was tried in the cour d’assises in March 1938, but was acquitted when the court accepted her plea of self-defense.

Nazi Collaboration and Assassination.

Morris was invited to attend the 1936 Summer Olympics by Adolf Hitler and historian Anne Sebba stated that Morris was an honored guest.

During World War II and the German occupation of France, Morris served as a collaborationist for the Nazis and Vichy France. The nature of her accused collaboration varies, with some, such as writer Raymond Ruffin, claiming one of her main responsibilities during the war was to foil the operation of the Special Operations Executive, a British-run organization that helped the Resistance. He also suggested that, as well as being a spy for the Nazis, she would have been involved in the torture of suspects, and for all of these activities, she was sentenced to death in absentia. Although Morris sourced black-market petrol for the Nazis, ran a garage for the Luftwaffe, and drove for the Nazi and Vichy hierarchy, others state that this appears to be the limit of her collaboration – and was in any case what she did before the fall of France – and that no evidence exists to support Ruffin’s claim that she was involved either in spying or torturing, but perhaps that she was a suitable scapegoat, especially considering her comments before the war. Whether or not it is accurate, her reputation for involvement in torture and enjoying it led her to become known popularly as the “hyena of the Gestapo.”

On 26 April 1944, while driving in her Citroën Traction Avant on a country road from Lieurey to Épaignes in Normandy with the Bailleul family, who were favorably positioned with the Nazi regime in France, Morris’ car sputtered and came to a halt. Earlier in the day, the engine had been tampered with by maquisards of the French Resistance Maquis Surcouf group. Resistance members then emerged from a hiding spot and opened fire on the car. The three adults and two children in the car were killed. Ruffin claimed that Morris was the target, but Bonnet states this is not clear, given the influence of the Bailleul family with the Nazis. Her body, riddled with bullets, was taken to a morgue, where it remained for months, unclaimed. She was buried in an unmarked communal grave.

Revolt of the Retired Generals

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By

Nathan Penkoski*

On April 21, twenty retired French generals published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron and the French government. The letter, which appeared in Valeurs actuelles, calls for France’s leaders to return to honor and defend patriotism: 

The hour is late, France is in peril, and many mortal dangers threaten her. Even though we are retired, we remain soldiers of France. In the present circumstances, we cannot remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful country . . . today our honor lies in denouncing the disintegration of our country.

The letter identifies several forms of disintegration afflicting France: the ideology of antiracism, Islamism, the scapegoating of the police, and the normalization of attacks on the police and military.

The letter’s preamble makes clear that France unites a variety of religions and races. But it excoriates “antiracism.” Antiracism is “exhibited for one purpose only: to create unrest and even hatred between the communities on our soil.” Activists advancing antiracism are “hateful and fanatical partisans” who “want racial warfare.”

The letter goes on to exhort France’s leadership to find the courage to eradicate the dangers that impel disintegration. The signatories promise that they will support policies that “take into account the preservation of the nation.” If the letter offers any means to address these dangers, they are hardly revolutionary: “often it is enough to apply, without weakness, the laws as they already exist.” Nevertheless the letter states the consequences of continued carelessness and cowardice, and holds France’s leaders to account. “Civil war will break upon this growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will be responsible, will number among the thousands.”

From an American perspective, the whole text is astonishing. It would be impossible to find twenty retired American generals, let alone two, who would dare suggest that the logic of “antiracism” entails racial warfare.  

But in France, the letter speaks to conventional political debates. Macron and his ministers now launch regular attacks on antiracism and identity politics, arguing that this American-made ideology threatens national unity and the integrity of the Republic. A recent poll indicates that 74 percent of the French think “antiracism” has the opposite effect. It is also not unusual to speak about the threat of war, even civil war, breaking out on French soil. In 2015, after Islamists killed 130 people on the streets of Paris, President François Hollande declared that France was at war. In 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of DGSI (France’s internal security agency) said that France was “on the edge of a civil war.” And another group of generals has just released a short report on how a “hybrid war” has been declared against France.

As a result, it is unlikely that the letter will change much of the national conversation. Still, it is significant because it raises the question of what role the army now plays in France’s beleaguered Republic, what role it has historically played, and what parallels exist.

According to an axiom of the French republican tradition, the French army never speaks publicly. Nicknamed la grande muette, the army has no right to demonstrate, speak on political matters, or go on strike. Any soldier who does so is subject to immediate discipline. Though joining a union is a constitutional right in France, the army has no union. Moreover, for most of the Republic’s history, soldiers had no right to vote; suffrage was extended to women before the army. What the army thinks about political matters, therefore, is a constitutionalized enigma.

The generals are fully aware of this. Even though the letter was organized by retired officers, and even though it takes the form of a polite exhortation to patriotism, it departs from precedent and damages the prestige of Macron’s government. The government would likely have ignored it, had not Marine Le Pen followed up with her own letter, urging the generals to rally to her. It was a clever tactic on her part, because according to a LCI/Harris Interactive poll, 58 percent of the French support the letter and its signatories. Immediately, prominent leftists denounced the letter—not so much for its content, but on the grounds that the army was breaking its precedent of silence, and thereby threatening the Republic. The Minister of the Army denounced it and promised sanctions against any soldier on active duty who signed. The more hysterical voices argued that the letter was akin to the attempted putsch of 1961, when four generals who dissented from de Gaulle’s Algerian policy attempted to overthrow the government. All this gave the letter much more attention. Now 23,312 soldiers have signed. 
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While it is absurd to suggest that writing a letter is the same as plotting to seize radio stations and airports throughout France, the leftist anxiety has some basis. France’s four prior Republics have stood or fallen depending on whether they maintained the support of the army. The First and Second Republics effectively ended with Napoleonic coups d’état. The Third Republic fell in 1940 in large part because it had lost the confidence of the army. Appalled by the failures of political leadership before and during the war, the army would only trust one of their own, Marshall Pétain, to lead the French state thereafter. Some generals evinced their contempt for the parliamentarians by urging Pétain to undertake a coup d’état in July 1940; but Pétain, more respectful of republican proprieties, sought and gained the path of parliamentary legitimacy. A supermajority confirmed him as head of state on July 11.

Yet the leftists are wrong to contend that the army’s entry into politics must culminate in Bonapartist or Caesarist-style authoritarianism, and that it is intrinsically hostile to republicanism. The Third and Fifth Republics have a secret. Without the army, the founding of these republican constitutional orders would not have been possible.  

The Third Republic was only established because its leaders called the National Guard into Paris to suppress the Commune. The fact that the Republic’s leaders were willing to use force to crush the hard left reassured the army and the rest of the country that a republic need not be a Jacobin or “red” republic. That allowed the Third Republic to secure a wide basis of legitimacy, which prevented civil war.

The circumstances that secured the founding of the Fifth Republic are also rather delicate, as there are key parallels between 1940 and 1958. Just as in 1940, the government in 1958 had lost the confidence of the army—this time in the wake of the worsening and badly managed crisis in Algeria. Just as in 1940, in 1958 the very constitution seemed to be part of the problem, an impediment to order. Just as in 1940, in 1958 the army and French people looked to a universally respected military man, General de Gaulle, to restore order. The major difference was that in early 1958, the left-of-center parties opposed, rather than supported, the military man’s entry into politics. De Gaulle lacked the requisite parliamentary majority. So as the Fourth Republic prevaricated and civil war grew more and more likely, the army stepped in. 

In the summer of 1958, troops seized strategic points throughout Algeria, Corsica, and southern France, setting up emergency political authorities called “Committees of Public Safety.” They forced parliament’s hand and compelled it to give General de Gaulle emergency powers. This was the Fourth Republic voting to abolish itself, since it was commonly known that de Gaulle would change the constitution and replace the strong legislative so dear to French republicans with a strong quasi-monarchical executive. It was wholesale regime change, a revolution. Moreover, without the army’s involvement, there would have been civil war instead of the relatively smooth transition to the Fifth Republic that took place. This fact made de Gaulle uneasy. Thereafter, he pretended the army had played a marginal role in his ascent to power in 1958. 

What is the significance of this secret behind France’s Republics? When the Republics have failed to address existential threats to France, their legitimacy has inexorably eroded. As the Republics have descended further into post-constitutionalism, the army has become increasingly implicated in the question of how France should be ruled and what constitutional order best serves the nation. And the French people have again and again looked to the army, and military presidents from MacMahon to Pétain to de Gaulle, to restore the state and secure the Republic. Some attempts have failed. But others have succeeded. It is telling that no one has suggested that the real parallels to the letter lie less in the Algerian putsch, and more in the military’s increasing public assertiveness in the 1950s, as the Fourth Republic floundered and the idea of de Gaulle returning to power became a serious possibility. The idea is too delicate to voice publicly. Better to emphasize the extremist coup that failed than the moderate coup that succeeded.

While it is important not to hyperbolize the 1950s comparison, the pressures placed on contemporary France do suggest some similarities. The French army is the only major European army engaged in combat. It has been in Mali for almost eight years, fighting Islamic terrorists. This mission, ostensibly on behalf of the European Union, sees very little tangible commitment from other E.U. member states. Only France pays for this mission, and only French soldiers die. The recent death of the president of Chad and a stalwart French ally, Idriss Déby, complicates the mission and raises grave concerns about how stable Chad is and whether France should commit more blood and treasure there.

Moreover, the army is under considerable duress. Since the 2015 Muslim attacks in Paris, the French army patrols the entire country. Having decided to give up machine guns at the frontiers to allow open borders, France now has machine guns on every street corner. The army patrols cities, train stations, and airports. It defends schools and synagogues, and appears in front of churches during Christian holidays. Unlike in the past few decades, the French now feel closer to the army because they see more of it; the regularity of the Islamist attacks reminds them why the soldiers are there, and they are grateful. Unlike the police, who have spent the past year issuing fines for not wearing masks, the army preserves its reputation.

It is unclear whether la grande muette thinks well of the country’s political leadership. Macron, the first president who did not do military service, has a tense relationship with the military. Macron’s honeymoon period in the presidency came to a halt in mid-2017, when General Pierre de Villiers, chef d’état major (France’s highest ranking military official, second only to the Minister of the Army) abruptly resigned. Macron had cut the military budget, and de Villiers contended that military equipment was now inadequate to meet the demands placed on the army. A smaller budget would threaten his men, and he could not endorse it. Since then, de Villiers has maintained a sympathetic public profile, published successful books, and considered running for president. He has prominent supporters, including his brother, Philippe de Villiers, a former presidential candidate and one of the right’s most stalwart cultural figures. Moreover, the same LCI/Harris Interactive poll indicates that the French still look to the army to restore the state and secure the Republic. Forty-nine percent support the army intervening to restore order, even without the approval of the government. 

As France drifts closer to its presidential elections, nothing is prearranged and no authoritative prediction should have purchase. Yet alongside the question of whether Macron has adequately addressed France’s existential threats and whether France is adequately governed, we should expect to see the question of the role the army plays in this regime rising in prominence. Once again, the army poses a political question.

Nathan Pinkoski is a postdoctoral research fellow at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. This article was first published at First Things (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/05/revolt-of-the-retired-generals) on 53 May 2021

But What Is It Doing at Oxford?

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Theodore Zeldin is a retired Oxford professor. During his academic career his interests have reached from the reign of Napoleon III to freedom, gastronomy, and the future of work among other things. He is also a public intellectual who has been called one of the world’s most influential hundred scholars. The list of organizations that have sponsored his work, or invited him to speak, or presented him with some kind of award, is well-nigh endless. One of his books, An Intimate History of Humanity (1994), was even used by Australia’s National Museum as the basis of an exhibition of the emotions of that continent’s inhabitants. It was brought to my attention by a friend and former student who sought to help me with a project I am working on. That is why I want to write about it here.

In this particular volume, Zeldin’s objective is to show that some of people’s most intimate experiences—hope, solitude, love, sex, food, to mention but a few—are not the same at all times and in all civilizations. Instead he argues that, like anything else, they are historically-governed, meaning that they keep changing along with culture and society as a whole. As always with him, the volume focuses on France which Zeldin, the son of a Jewish-Russian couple who moved from Palestine to England, uses as a kind of gold standard for all other countries and societies to measure themselves by. Each chapter—even most of the few that supposedly deal with men—opens with an interview with one woman meant to illustrate some aspects in the emotional life of all others. Each interview is mixed with Zeldin’s ruminations on who she is, how she fits into society, how other societies have tried to deal with similar problems, and so on.

Why Zeldin only interviews women—who, after all, only form half of humanity—is never explained. But never mind. A typical interview, focusing on sex, is with a woman named Alicia R. Ivars. Spanish by origin, educated in France, she speaks four languages though none perfectly (who cares?). She is a professor (where? Of what?) and a self-appointed geisha—in the sense that she sees her destiny in pleasing others and avoids difficult question like who she is, what she is doing in this world, and so on. She always wears “amazing” attention-drawing clothes, runs a restaurant called “Garden of Delights,” and is “a world authority on olive oil.” What follows is a short extract of Zeldin’s text to give you an idea of what it is like.

“Sex is a separate matter, a distinct activity, ‘not to be ruined by an excess of intimate feelings or confidences, because then you become a slave to it.’ That does not mean Alicia wishes to avoid intimate feelings. ‘I have never been afraid of my intimate feelings. I have always enjoyed psychotropic experiences without panicking at the idea of losing contact with my inner self or with my body. I know which melody, which rhythm, which smell or caress or stroke will provide me with my desired intimate feeling.’ Engaging in sex is thus comparable with cooking; both create pleasure, ‘intimate feelings,’ both enable one to create such feelings in another. She distinguishes first of all ‘pure sex.’ In her youth she had this with a ‘Tantric man,’ with whom she carried on an ‘ultra-erotic correspondence, with a profusion of illustrations’ and whom she visited two or three times a year for the ‘actualization of all our fantasies.’”
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“… There is no reason, she thinks, why there should be any limits to sexual activity. I have not yet found limits to my predisposition… She remembers the visit of a foreigner to whom she was ‘very attracted: I could have played and enjoyed with her, she so wonderful to me, so much in need of affection, just recently a widow, we probably had telepathic sex.’” “At a young age, [Alicia] taught herself to cut her own hair, and has never been to a hairdresser since. That is the sign of her independence. Her hairstyles are always exotic like nobody else’s.”

“In Canada,” says another woman named Florence, selected to exemplify the nature of desire, “she met a marvelous man. For four days they talked. He was not afraid to say what he felt; he seemed authentic. “He satisfied my desire for harmony and gentleness.’ But she does not know what will become of this friendship, which appeals only to one side of her. ‘He does not put me in danger. I need not to have complete emotional security.’ Time will tell.” And so on, and so on, the kind of “luv” talk mixed with psychobabble one may expect to find in any women’s magazine with a minimum of “intellectual” pretense.

This is the kind of verbal diarrhea one expects to find in women’s weeklies. But what is it doing at Oxford?

The Strange Case of Versailles

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The Treaty of Versailles, the hundredth anniversary of which will be remembered in June of this year, has attracted more than its share of historical debate. What has not been said and written about it? That it did not go far enough, given that Germany lost only a relatively small part of its territory and population and was allowed to continue to exist as a unified state under a single government (French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau). That it went much too far, thus helping lay the foundations of World War II. That it imposed a “Carthaginian Peace” (the British economist John Maynard Keynes in his 1919 best-seller, The Economic Consequences of the Peace). That it was “made in order to bring twenty million Germans to their deaths, and to ruin the German nation” (according to a speech delivered in Munich on 13 April 1923 by a thirty-four year old demagogue named Adolf Hitler). All these views, and quite some others, started being thrown about almost as soon as the ink on the Treaty had dried. In one way or another, all of them are still being discussed in the literature right down to the present day.

But what was there about the Treaty that was so special? Was it really as original, as unique, as has so often been maintained? Was the brouhaha it gave rise to justified? By way of obtaining an answer to this seldom-asked question, consider the following.

*

First, the transfer of territory. Throughout human history, control over territory and the population it contained has been one of the most important issues, often the most important issue, over which first tribes, then kingdoms, and finally states went to war against each other. Furthermore, right down to modern times war itself was seen as a normal method whereby rulers either gained territory or were forced to give it up. When the Allies, in 1918, deprived Germany of its colonies; when they detached Alsace Lorraine and gave them back to France; when they took away much of West Prussia and handed it to Poland; when they did the same in Silesia; when, having held a plebiscite, they gave northern Schleswig to Denmark; when they took away the Saar for a period of fifteen years; and when they gave Memel to Lithuania—in all these cases, they were doing little more than what rulers had always done. And as the Germans themselves had done, on a vastly larger scale, by the Diktat that was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk they forced on the Bolsheviks just fifteen months earlier. The one that made General Max Hoffmann, Ludendorff’s deputy, say that the only question regarding the Russians was which sauce they would be eaten with.

Second, disarmament. Some of the best-known articles in the Treaty sought to limit Germany’s armed forces. Conscription, which was introduced at the time of the French Revolution and had since become the preferred way by which most of the world’s armed forces obtained the cannon fodder they needed, was abolished. The army, which at peak had numbered about five million men (no women, incidentally, to share in the joys of the trenches) was limited to just 100,000 organized into seven light infantry divisions. Heavy warships, submarines, military aircraft, tanks, heavy artillery and gas were all prohibited; existing stocks were handed over or dismantled, and fairly successful attempts to prevent them from being rebuilt undertaken. The General Staff, which starting in the wars of 1866-71 was widely seen as one of the principal pillars of Germany’s military power, was closed down. So, finally, were the famous Kadetanstalten where many aspiring young officers were put through their paces. Under the Weimar Republic, so weak was the Reichswehr that, as a 1929 wargame showed, it was unable to stop a Polish invasion of East Prussia, Had Warsaw wanted too, its troops might perhaps have marched all the way to Berlin.

Yet in this respect, too, there were precedents. The one most familiar to many Germans is Napoleon’s 1808 decision to reduce the Prussian army by about four fifths, leaving just 42,000 men under arms. The prohibition remained in effect for some five years and only came to an end when the Wars of Liberation broke out in 1813. An even better case in point is the Peace of Apamea. Apamea was a Hellenistic city in today’s western Asia Minor. In 188 BCE it witnessed the negotiations between Rome and its defeated enemy, King Antiochus III of Syria. Territorial losses apart, Antiochus was obliged to surrender all the war elephants in his possession and undertake not to raise or purchase new ones. His navy was limited to just twelve warships—to give the reader an idea of what this meant, Athens during the days of its greatness some three centuries previously had maintained no fewer than four hundred—although this number might be increased in case he came under attack.

What is probably the oldest example of forced disarmament may be found in the Bible (1. Samuel 13.19-22). “Now there was,” we are told, “no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, ‘Lest the Hebrews make swords or spears.’ But all the Israelites would go down to the Philistines to sharpen each man’s plowshare, his mattock, his ax, and his sickle;  and the charge for a sharpening was two thirds of one shekel for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to set the points of the goads.  So it came about, on the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan. But they were found with Saul and Jonathan his son.” Does this remind anyone of President Trump’s attempt to limit the ability of Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles?

Third, demilitarization. By the articles of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was obliged to withdraw all its forces from the lands west of the Rhine and refrain from trying to fortify them. Here, too, there were plenty of precedents. Probably the best-known one is Athens’ Long Walls. Built by Pericles as part of the preparations for the Peloponnesian War against Sparta, they linked the city with the port of Piraeus, thus rendering it immune to a siege. In 404-3 BCE, following Athens’ defeat, they were dismantled.

This was hardly the only case of this kind. In 1714 the British forced Louis XIV to demolish his naval base at Dunkirk so that it could no longer be used for either military or civilian purposes. In 1738, in the aftermath of a war that had lasted for some two years, Holy Roman Emperor Karl V undertook to demolish the fortresses of Belgrade and Šabac as the price for peace with the Ottomans. In 1856, following the Crimean War, Article XI of the Treaty of Paris obliged the Tsar to refrain from establishing any naval or military arsenal on the Black Sea coast. As one might expect, none of these agreements lasted for very long, a fact that also applies to all the others discussed in the present article.
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Fourth, compensation. As part of the settlement, Germany was supposed to pay its former enemies 132 billion gold marks (present-day value, about 400 billion Euro). This reminded people of 1870-71 when Bismarck made the French pay an indemnity of five billion gold francs. To return to Antiochus, on top of all his other concessions he was made to pay the huge sum of 15,000 talents—about 450,000 kilograms—in bullion. Of those, 500 had to be paid immediately; 2,500, upon the Roman Senate’s ratification of the Treaty; and the remaining 12,000 in twelve annual instalments of l,000 talents each. Unfortunately Appian, the ancient historian who is our source for this story, does not say whether the payments were to be made in silver or in gold. If in the former, then we are talking about 2 billion Euro or so; if in the latter, no less than 16 billion. Since then over two millennia have passed; as they say, though, nothing new under the sun.

Finally, the question of war guilt (or rather, responsibility; contrary to what most people believe, the word “guilt” was not written into the Treaty). If there is anything on which subsequent historians agree, it is that no other clause was so strongly resented by Germany’s leadership and people alike. Yet, paradoxically, the reason why this particular article (No. 231) was inserted at all was in order to get the French and Belgians to agree to reduce the sum of money Germany would have to hand over. In other words, the English and American delegations saw the article as the price they had to pay in order to make their allies sign. The objective was to reduce the financial burden on Germany, not to make it heavier still. Apparently they had no idea either how offensive it was or of the way it would later be exploited by German nationalist, including National Socialist, propaganda.

The man most responsible for the article was none other than John Foster Dulles. Born in 1888, at that time he was a junior diplomat and legal counsel to the U.S delegation. Later he became Secretary of State under President Eisenhower (1953-61) and, as such, the most important Western Cold Warrior of all. Today he has one of Washington DC’s airports named after him. Where he got the idea remains unknown. As best I have been able to find out, no similar clause had been included in any previous peace treaty, ancient or modern. That, however, does not mean that guilt was not assigned. To the contrary: throughout history Thucydides’ dictum that the strong take what they want and the weak suffer what they must was very much in force. When the First Gulf War was brought to an end in 1991 those who had fought Saddam took it for granted that he was guilty—“responsible,” as the phrase goes—of initiating the conflict even though no explicit statement to that effect appeared in any of the relevant documents.

Explicitly or tacitly, war-guilt was used as the justification for the way the victors treated the losers. The best the latter could expect was to be robbed of much, if not all, their possessions; the worst, to be taken captive, enslaved, and/or massacred. Very often resistance itself was understood as a crime. As, for example, when Timur put to death the populations of cities that refused to surrender and had towers built of their skulls; and when the Duke of Alba had the garrisons of captured Dutch cities killed en masse. Not surprisingly, the same applied to leaders. Particularly famous in this respect was the Roman triumph, at the end of which the enemy’s captured leaders were thrown down the Tarpeian Rock; among those who suffered that fate were the leaders of the Jewish Revolt of 67-70 CE. Many other victorious societies also executed their defeated enemy’s leaders, often in public and often in a variety of interesting ways. As, to return to the Bible, Joshua did to the kings of Canaanite cities he had captured and the prophet Samuel to the Amalekite King Agag.

*

To sum up, it was as contemporaries used to say: the Treaty of Versailles left Germany Heerloss, Wehrloss, and Ehrloss. Nevertheless, the more closely one looks at it the clearer it becomes that there was nothing very special about it. Not only had many previous treaties been quite as severe, but practically every one of its clauses had numerous precedents. The only important exception was the one concerning war guilt. Congratulations, David Lloyd-George, congratulations, Woodrow Wilson, congratulations, John Foster Dulles; judging by its origins, this may indeed be a case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Yet even in this respect the Treaty did not so much introduce an innovation as put a formal gloss on what, through much of history, had been taken very much for granted.

This raises the question, why did the Treaty acquire the bad name it did, not only in Germany but abroad too? And what was its real contribution to the failure of the Weimar Republic, the ascent of National Socialism, and the outbreak of World War II? Was it a cause, or merely a pretext? If the latter, then what were the real causes?

A hundred years later, the answers are still blowing in the wind.

Submission

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5fdcff2c292f05e483816c459c6743e9Soumission is the title of a new book by the formidable French writer Michel Houllebecq. Judging by everything I had read and heard, I thought it was a description of all the terrible things that would happen in France under a Muslim Government.

It is not. Mainly it is a devastating—devastating, I say—critique of modern French, and in many ways Western, society. For a millennium, people used to worship the Christian God. Next came patriotism as represented, in France, by the great poet Charles Péguy. By now, though, both of these ideals are stone-dead. The outcome is a society that recognizes no higher law. Nothing that is sacred and stands above the desires and caprices of individual people. One in which “emancipated” women, competing with men and in many ways behaving like them, have nothing to offer them except a good blowjob or a nice ass. In which, in other words, women are as bad, or as good, as prostitutes.

This is a world in which the family is supposed to be based on “love,” but in which a very large percentage of all marriages end in divorce. In which there are very few children—throughout the book, Houllebeck does not mention even one. In which adults leave the care of their aged parents to uneducated foreign workers with whom, in many cases, they cannot even communicate. A society which claims to be free, yet in which it is impossible for anyone to be a more than a few days away from home without being flooded by all kinds of letters from the authorities.

François, who tells the story in first person, is a lecturer at the Sorbonne. His field is French literature. Specifically the nineteenth century writer Joris Huysmans about whom, years ago, he wrote an eight-hundred page dissertation. Like thousands of others, it exists in all of four copies.

Since then, except for a few articles in a godforsaken scholarly magazine, he has done nothing. He has even managed to concentrate all his classes in one day of the week, leaving the other six free. Some of his students are inscrutable young Chinese women who both record and write down everything he says. Others are even more inscrutable young Muslim women in their burkas. None ever asks any questions. Other students still, who are doing their PhDs, ask too many senseless questions to which there is no answer. Either way, François has no idea why any of them are where they are and do what they do. After all, everyone knows that a diploma in literature leads nowhere. In fact he sees the humanities, and presumably many of the social sciences as well, as a joke. One which serves nothing and no one. Its only purpose is its own survival.

Such is the state of things when the Muslim Brotherhood Government takes over in France. Its rise is made possible by the fact that the Socialists, motivated by hatred of the right-wing National Front, voted for it. The new president is Ahmed Ben Abbes. The scion of a low-class Muslim family in France, he has worked himself up and benefitted from the country’s elite schools. In many ways he personifies the best France has to offer.

François has never been interested in politics. Why should he be? For decades now French politics, and by no means only French politics, have moved from moderate right to moderate left and back again. Nothing ever changes. Besides, François has a steady income and lives in an Ivory Tower. So do his colleagues whose specialties are as limited as his own.

He first learns that politics might be interested in him when the University is suddenly closed sine die, no reason given. He uses the opportunity to travel into the countryside, which he barely knows, in the vague hope of re-discovering the old, authentic France. He is disappointed; nothing there. He does, however, accidentally meet a female colleague, Françoise, and her husband. Since the new Government will not tolerate female teachers at the universities, she has just been fired. Now she manages her household and seems quite happy doing so.

Pump is use just generic super cialis http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1483475739_add_file_5.pdf before sex to draw blood into the penis. If the law of karma were put into play now, the spirit of Christmas would burn as levitra viagra cialis intensely bright for the mayor and his firefighters as it will be for the couple once again, but this time they have cold feet…and they prefer not to go the therapy route, so they hold tight until the day comes when one of them is served with divorce. In Brazil, farmland is in the hands of oligopolies, and each oligopoly is developing generic sample viagra its own transportation network that is not shared for maximum benefit like it is in the U.S. cialis 60mg Healing mineral water sounds strange for most Americans, but many Europeans spend healthy vacations in the thermal spring mineral spas.

The husband, Alan Tanneur, is something else. He used to work for the secret service. For being right in forecasting some violence on elections day, he and his entire team have been placed on the retired list. Now it is he who explains the new political situation to François. Ben Abbes’ purpose, Tanneur says, is much broader than just governing France and turning it into a Muslim country. He his ultimate goal is to re-institute the Roman Empire by bringing the countries east and south of the Mediterranean into the EU. Negotiations with several of them have already started and are going well.

Back in Paris, François begins to note other changes. Some forms of female dress that used to expose much of the body are no longer. To distinguish themselves from men, women have switched back from trousers to skirts. But over long stockings that cover their legs. They are no longer allowed to work outside the home, causing unemployment to disappear. The petty criminals who used to sell drugs and pick people’s pockets have vanished from the streets. Many bars have closed. The trains no longer run on time as they used to. France is governed by an economic system known as Distributism. Seeking to favor the little man, it systematically discriminates against large corporations. As a result, the country is growing steadily poorer.

Yet the University is positively swimming in money. Thanks to the Saudis who, vastly overestimating the influence of the intellectuals on French society are bankrolling it. François is invited to a party hosted by Rediger, his superior at the University, who will soon be appointed minister of education. There are no women there, only men. Perhaps that is why, instead of people of both sexes ogling each other and exchanging silly comments meant to please, the conversation is deep and fruitful. Rediger has just married a second, younger, woman. Only fifteen years old, she will meet his needs in bed. Meanwhile the first one, who older and seems to be is darling, looks after the household. After all, Islamic Law allows a man to have as many as four wives.

François has just been asked to prepare a new edition of Huysmans for the well-known publishing house, Pléiade. Rediger, who values François as a scholar, asks him to convert to Islam as he himself had recently done. Just a small step, changing nothing really, and he can have his job at the University back. With a considerable raise, what is more.

François hesitates. To resolve his doubts, he travels to a monastery where his hero Huysmans also spent some time in an attempt to re-find his faith. A faith, he now realizes, in an idiotic religion. First God created man. Next, with the aid of Satan, He made him sin; next He had his own son crucified in order to redeem him. Though the monks do their best, François finds nothing.

Back in Paris, he converts. It is an easy procedure, lasting no more than a few minutes. All that is asked of him is that he repeat the formula, “there is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet” in the mosque in front of some witnesses. That, and submission to Allah’s inscrutable will.

Meanwhile the word has spread that university teachers make attractive husbands. They are not just a bunch of sexual harassers, which is how they are treated in my own old Alma Mater. And not just in my own Alma Mater either. Any of François’ young, shy female students will be honored to share her bed with him. They are not emancipated and they are not sluts. They are worth loving, and he would be able to love them. No, François has no regrets.

In view of what Western society has become, is there any reason why anyone should?

Human All Too Human

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M. L. Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2013.

 

What alerted me to the existence of this book was a radio program to which I happened to listen one fine Saturday morning. The way it was presented, Mary Roberts, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, had caused a stir by drawing her readers’ attention to the sexual misbehavior of American troops in France during the period from June 1944 to VE Day. Another feminist tear-jerker about bad men abusing poor innocent women, I thought.

As it turned out, the book is anything but. In her introduction, Prof. Roberts dwells on the realistic premise that any attempt to understand the relationship between the United States and France as it developed after the Normandy landings cannot limit itself to high-level diplomatic exchanges alone. It should, instead, look at the way GIs—as many as four million of them, serving under General Eisenhower—interacted with the French population and the French population, with the GIs. The more so because those interactions both reflected and created the images both sides formed of each other; images which in turn were not without impact on high-level diplomatic exchanges and decisions. Speaking of interaction, the problem of sex neither can nor should be avoided. And it is on sex that Prof. Roberts trains her telescope.

The introduction apart, the book falls into three parts dealing with romance, prostitution and rape respectively. To start with romance, countless French women of all walks of life allowed themselves to be seduced by American soldiers. Unlike French men, humiliated by defeat and often all but penniless, the GIs were big, strong and healthy. In contrast to French men, some two million of whom were still in Germany, either locked up in prisoner of war camps or else working there, they were also available. What is more, the GIs were willing and able to supply French women with mundane but essential products such as food, chocolate, and, above all, cigarettes. Is it any wonder that romance, including the kind of romance that resulted in marriage, was rife? Other women, including some who had previously offered their services to the Germans, actively solicited GIs and slept with them on a more or less regular, more or less professional basis. The more time went on and the initial enthusiasm of liberation waned, the greater the tendency to put things on a businesslike, if often sordid, basis; in a sense, the whole of France was turned into a single gigantic brothel.

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There also appear to have been numerous cases of rape. As I pointed out in my 1982 book, Fighting Power, the US Army executed far more of its soldiers for rape/murder than for desertion. Rape, however, is not as straightforward a concept as some feminists claim. Instead it has many different degrees. It starts with the kind of incident in which a soldier seizes some totally unknown woman, drags here into a dark alley, and uses violence to force her to have sex with him. It ends with a man and a woman, even such as have known each other for some time, spending an evening together. They flirt, dance and drink, after which the former becomes a little too insistent and the latter, a little more yielding than, having sobered up, she feels she should have been. In such cases the sex that takes place is often seen by one side sees as consensual and by other as forced. Throughout her book Prof. Roberts rightly emphasizes the enormous economic advantage even the lowliest GI enjoyed over most French people with whom he was in contact and whom the war had turned into beggars. Against this background, as well as the fact that most soldiers did not stay in one place but were constantly being transferred, no wonder the line between rape, prostitution and romance was often a fine one.

In exploring the relationship, the sexual relationship above all, between Americans and French, liberators and liberated, men and women, rich and poor, Prof. Roberts has done the literature a signal service. For American readers, perhaps the most interesting is the last chapter with its detailed exploration of the way the U.S Army and French public opinion collaborated in creating an image of black soldiers as hyper-sexualized savages and treating them accordingly. It is, unfortunately, necessary to mention three points that somewhat mar her otherwise excellent book. First, the author does not know much about military life and war, and its shows. As, for example, when she says that “an armored vision”—in reality, probably a tank or two—destroyed a French train. Second, the text is highly repetitive. Often the same episodes, even the same phrases, are found in more than one chapter.

Finally, a more systematic comparison with the situation during the four years of German occupation, by offering perspective, would have been useful. How did French women behave towards Wehrmacht soldiers, and vice versa? What role did the fact that the Germans came as occupiers and the Americans as liberators play? Did relations between French women and German soldiers differ from those they developed with American ones, and, if so, in what ways? How representative are the things that happened in France in 1944 of human behavior in similar situations? As things are, all we get is some tantalizing hints.

In this context I am struck by a memory which has been with me for thirty years or so. At some time around 1980 I was working at the West German Military Archive (Bundesarchiv/Militaerarchiv, BAMA for short) in Freiburg. I came across a document—I no longer have a clue as to who was addressing whom, and for what purpose—which said that American troops in France in the second half of 1944 raped more French women than German ones had during four years of occupation. Assuming the claim is true, there may be some kind of lesson there; though just what it is, is blowing in the wind.